US faces '10-year issue' in Syria, says top military general

The United States faces 'a 10-year issue' in Syria, top U.S. military officer ahs said.

The warning from Army General Martin Dempsey came as the US is weighing how deeply it wants to get involved the country's civil war.

Dempsey in an interview with CNN's State of the Union said that the conflict is now spilling over into both Lebanon and Iraq, and those underlying causes 'will persist for 10 years'.

Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the conflict is related to a competition at best and a conflict at worse between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam.

He added that it's been hijacked at some level on both sides by extremists-al Qaeda on one side and Lebanese Hezbollah and others on the other side.

He added that the conflict is about a 10-year issue, and if the US fails to think about it as a 10-year regional issue, they could make some mistakes.

Dempsey, Obama's principal military adviser, said that the war in Syria is 'not a simple matter of stopping the fight by the introduction of any particular U.S. capability,' the report added.